


Girls' Nght

by silveradept



Category: Humans Are Space Orcs (Meme)
Genre: Alien perspectives, Drinking, Drinking Games, Gen, Girls' Night, Mention of pregnancy, Television Taken Seriously, Thesis Research, controlling parents, defying expectations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28075059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: Katebrica was happy at the opportunity to observe a real human Girls' Night for ver thesis.It probably would have gone better if these humans were anything like the ones in the cultural broadcasts.
Relationships: Doctor Fawkes & Jasmine Kerrigan & Yuri Swift, Katebrica & Yuri Swift
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Girls' Nght

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whereisthedamnlostandfound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereisthedamnlostandfound/gifts).



Chronometer 20:15, Seventh Revolution, Sixth Cycle, Fifteenth Orbit of the Reign of Korkalei and Arnathaya, May Their Reign Be Long:

"Explain to me what we are doing again?" I asked Engineer Swift.

"Jazz just had to talk with her parents again about why she's not finding a nice boy to settle down with and get a house, so we're going to her quarters to cheer her up. We're going to eat junk food, drink some booze in solidarity and trash some terrible holos. It's Girls' Night. It'll be good first-hand observation for your thesis."

Before I could say anything about Engineer Swift's cavalier attitude toward academic ethics, the door to Botanist Kerrigan's quarters opened.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're here!" Botanist Kerrigan said to both of us, reaching out to pull us inside.

"My condolences on your difficult interaction with your parents," I said, at a loss for any other words.

"Yeah," Botanist Kerrigan said sadly, before replacing her sadness with cheerful features and addressing Engineer Swift. "Doc Fawkes brought _Five Nights at Freddy's_."

"Oh, I heard about that one!" Engineer Swift said. "Every review said the graphics were so bad they couldn't do anything but laugh at what were supposed to be terrifying robots. I thought you were lacking a bit in your B-movie classics, so I brought _Alone In The Dark_."

"If it's terrible, it's welcome here," Botanist Kerrigan said. "Although, I have to admit, after the last one, I went looking. There's an entire catalog of them, Yuri. We could spend the rest of our lives making fun of them and never leave all of these greeting card holos."

"I can only take so much of 'Big city girl is forced to move out to the country, where she meets a charming and handsome boy and decides that she's going to give up all of that metropolitan cosmpolitan-ness, settle down with him and his charmingly quaint small-town values, and get married so she can spend the rest of her days cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children they're already planning on having' before I have to go pick a fight with Rita," Engineer Swift said.

"Too much talking, not nearly enough drinking," Doctor Fawkes complained, setting two bottles of beer-alcohol on the table next to the other humans, tail twitching in annoyance. "There's an entire bar to go through before we get done tonight," she added, sweeping her hands across the display of alcohols she had set up before our arrival.

"Doctor," I said, confused, "while I don't know the exact concentrations in these drinks, it looks like there's enough poison here to kill all of us several times over."

"Which is why we don't drink it all at once," Doctor Fawkes replied evenly.

"That won't be a problem," Engineer Swift grumbled, after taking a drink of the beer-alcohol and grimacing. "The next time we get together, we need classier stuff than this."

"Go help Jazz find something to watch, Yuri," Doctor Fawkes said dismissively, before returning her attention to me. "Katebrica, if you're interested, we can mix you something. It doesn't have to be alcoholic."

I politely refused the offer, and resisted the urge to tell Doctor Fawkes that most sentient species in the galaxy considered deliberately ingesting poisons to be a sign of poor mental health, rather than a common recreational activity. One of the first things other sentients learned about humans was that they seemed to relish in opportunities to ingest substances in quantities that would be lethal to any other member of the crew. We would then learn human metabolic processes exhibited the ability to develop a tolerance for those already lethal doses of poisons, requiring still larger quantities before it would affect them in any significant way. On other, less professional, vessels, various crew took holos of what they called the "Human Challenge", trying to consume food and beverages made by humans and documenting their effects and the actions taken by those crew while under the influence of human-strength compounds.

"Oh hey, Doc, thanks for helping Arlo out last week," Engineer Swift called. "Ever since you 'accidentally'," Engineer Swift punctuated the word by flexing her index and middle digits on both hands, "left the comlink open and chewed him out in front of the entire crew, I've had a lot less attempts to swipe the coffee from my work station while I'm out fixing problems."

"I keep telling them that if they want to get blitzed, they need to do it off-shift and under the care of a responsible person," Doctor Fawkes said, sighing. "Yet nobody wants to take me up on that offer to be the responsible one."

"They know it's a trap," Botanist Kerrigan said, drinking from her own beer-alcohol bottle. "My parents always claimed that if I wanted to know what it was like to get blasted, they'd buy what I wanted and we could do it at home. They just had two conditions: they got to holo me while I was drunk and I had to watch that holo with them when I sobered up."

"And, suddenly, so many conversations about your family make _so_ much more sense," Engineer Swift said.

"Don't they _just_?" Botanist Kerrigan replied, exaggerating her features and tone to convey that she would much prefer to "cut a bitch," as Engineer Swift had described it to me before.

I moved closer to Doctor Fawkes to ask her a private question. "Engineer Swift suggested I could use this 'Girls' Night' opportunity for field research to further my dissertation. It seems unethical to do, but I would welcome a second opinion."

"Eh, scratch out the names and change some of the details around and you'll be fine," Doctor Fawkes said. I was not as good at hiding my disbelief at her response, because she got a questioning look on her face and continued, "How do you think research gets done?"

"With properly signed consent forms reviewed by boards for no impropriety," I replied.

Doctor Fawkes' tail began twitching much more severely, indicating I had added to her irritation, but she inhaled deeply, drank from some of her own beer-alcohol bottle, and stopped her tail from moving. "Right. Sometimes I forget that 'ask forgiveness rather than permission' is a very human attitude. Here, I'll make it easy for you. Jazz! Yuri!"

Engineer Swift and Botanist Kerrigan looked back at us from their discussion at the interruption.

"Is it okay for Katebrica to use this for ver dissertation?"

"Fuzz out the names and change the details, and I'm cool with it," Botanist Kerrigan said. 

Engineer Swift nodded. "Same here."

"There you go," Doctor Fawkes said, smiling at the indignant squawk that had escaped my beak before I could contain it. The directness of humans ruffled feathers almost as often as it smoothed them, and at that moment, I confess I could not understand how Doctor Fawkes had been repeatedly commended for exercising diplomacy and restraint in her interactions with others. Perhaps the beer-alcohol was affecting her character.

"Ah-ha! We have a winner!" Engineer Swift said. "It's got everything we're looking for: overbearing parents, marriage pressure, and people who think they know better than the main character."

"What's it called?" Doctor Fawkes asked, switching the empty bottles of beer-alcohol in front of Engineer Swift and Botanist Kerrigan for unopened full ones.

" _Dragon Girl_ ," Engineer Swift said.

"If there isn't burnination by the end of the movie, I'm going to be really disappointed," Botanist Kerrigan declared.

Engineer Swift showed her teeth non-threateningly and loaded the holomovie. "Okay, ground rules.

  1. Every time you hear the phrase 'wings and firey breath', take a sip.
  2. Every time they talk about happiness, take a sip.
  3. Every time the main character goes to see the witch, take a drink.
  4. Every time the witch gives her something that isn't what she asks for, take a drink.
  5. When the main character gets what she really wants, finish your bottle.



Sound fair?"

"Sounds like a recipe for getting shitfaced," Botanist Kerrigan replied, before raising her bottle. "Bottoms up!" The other humans raised their bottles and took long drinks afterward.

My emotional state must have been visible again, because only a few seconds into the holomovie, Botanist Kerrigan looked at me and paused the presentation. "Time out, point of order, whatever it is we're supposed to say for this. I don't think Katebrica has a clue what a drinking game is."

"None of this has been what I expected," I said. "The research I have read on Girls' Night suggested ornamenting yourselves, talking about the terribleness of the situation, and possibly spending a significant amount of time talking about your desires to mate with other crew members."

Engineer Swift and Botanist Kerrigan exchanged looks of incomprehension, while Doctor Fawkes was very clearly trying not to laugh, her tail shaking behind her.

" _Sixteen Candles?_ " Engineer Swift suggested.

" _ **Legally Blonde**_ ," Botanist Kerrigan said assertively. "The first one, not the sequels."

"Good choice," Engineer Swift acknowledged. " _After_ Dragon Girl, though. We're not nearly drunk enough to explain Hollywood stereotypes without laughing, and I don't want Katebrica getting the impression we're making fun of ver."

"Okay," Botanist Kerrigan said, resuming the holomovie. What followed seemed like a fairly standard human story about a newborn human being taken by a Talaxian as restitution for stealing one of their family jewels. The holomovie uses alchemical formulas to produce the appropriate changes needed for the young girl to achieve happiness, rather than using more standard means. There is a significant amount of time spent while the alchemist gives the human formulae that are not what she has requested, believing these alternate formulae will bring happiness. Botanist Kerrigan, Engineer Swift, and Doctor Fawkes routinely drank more beer-alcohol throughout the holomovie, sometimes after chanting one of the lines and laughing together.

The holomovie that followed was even more bizarre and involved far more laughter and consumption of beer-alcohol. It was a story about a clearly intelligent human who chooses to pursue a different profession and puts her intellect and life experience to use in advocacy for a person of her family of choice. Most of the movie seems to revolve around incorrect conclusions about this human's intelligence based on stereotype around her phenotype, which should have been dismissed as soon as they saw the results of her entrance examination to study advocacy. There were also several situations that resembled "Girls' Night" as described in Fravatike that I was very interested in studying on greater detail, but when I tried to explain this, both Engineer Swift and Botanist Kerrigan excused themselves to get new bottles of beer-alcohol without acknowledging my request. When I looked at Doctor Fawkes for help, she indicated negation with her head.

"Don't look at me for help," she added before looking at Botanist Kerrigan. "Jazz, you're the one who keeps getting told to act like a Disney Princess. You explain to Katebrica why this movie is so goddamn funny."

"How do you explain a dumb blonde joke to an alien?" Botanist Kerrigan replied irritably. "And then tell them that this movie is funny because it subverts the joke entirely, to the point where all that 'shallow' fashion and hair care knowledge she has means she can tear apart the star witnesses for the prosecution in a case that's basically tailored to her expertise?"

"Like that," Doctor Fawkes said, her tail indicating smugness. "Also, drink, because if you can analyze the movie like that, you're not nearly drunk enough."

"Ugh," Botanist Kerrigan said, but did drink. "I just wish my parents would stop trying to set me up on blind dates."

"Tell them you've decided to only date women for the next year," Engineer Swift said. "That you've only been focusing on one side of your bisexuality and you need to get some balance back in your life."

"Then they'd try to set me up on blind dates with women," Botanist Kerrigan replied. "Their taste in men is bad, but their taste in women would be terrible."

"They're that desperate for grandkids, huh?"

"Yep. And yes, Doc, I have told them about your offer to give them IVF if they're so desperate for more kids. They don't think you're serious—"

"Shows what they know." Doctor Fawkes said, showing her teeth non-threateningly.

"—and I'm pretty sure what they really want is to go through all of the meeting the parents and planning the wedding and all of the ceremony that then results in kids, because if you do it all right beforehand, then you have a wedding night pregnancy. And then you can't get rid of whomever it is because they'll shame you forever for creating a broken home and not making it work for the child, or, let's be real here, children, because they're not going to be satisfied with just one."

"Are there no people you find compatible?" I asked. "I have heard many words of appreciation about you from other crew members and visitors."

"If it isn't 'Holy shit, she grows plants that could eat me alive!', I'm not interested," Botanist Kerrigan declared.

"So, if you're Poison Ivy, does that make me Harley Quinn?" Engineer Swift asked. "Because I've got a fucking huge hammer I hit shit with and I have to work with a bunch of jokers."

"Not unless you're also really turned on by the possibility of sex with a plant girl," Botanist Kerrigan declared.

"Well, you are petty hot," Engineer Swift replied, smiling and swaying slightly. I don't know how much beer-alcohol she had, but it seemed the effects were finally catching up to her.

"Nope. Nope, nooooooope," Doctor Fawkes said, stepping between the other two crew members. "There will be no drunken sex that you might regret in the morning on my watch. Party's done. Katebrica, will you take Yuri home? I've got to clean up and make sure Jazz makes it to bed safely."

I assented to the task of getting Engineer Swift back to her quarters safely.

"Take a couple laps around the outer ring first," Doctor Fawkes added. "It'll help sober Yuri up enough that I won't have to worry about her in the morning."

Given how unsteady and unbalanced Engineer Swift appeared, I was unsure additional time spent in locomotion would be helpful, but I trusted Doctor Fawkes to give sensible advice, and so Engineer Swift and I walked for some significant time. After the first circuit, Engineer Swift had significantly improved coordination and balance, and by the end of the second, it seemed as if the effects of the beer-alcohol had disappeared entirely.

Having delivered Engineer Swift safely to her quarters, I retreated to my own to record my observations. After sleeping, I must remember to send all three formal requests to be included in my research.

If this is what an actual human Girls' Night is like, then Fravatike's theory of cultural broadcasts is completely wrong and we know even less about humans than we think.

All the same, I think, perhaps, I will take advice from something I heard Engineer Swift say to Engineering Assistant Arlo and sleep with one of my eyes open. I would very much dislike things if it turns out that the cultural broadcasts have some truth to them and humans do become monsters bent on the destruction of everything after consumption of beer-alcohol.

I will ask the opinion of the Chair of Human Studies about all of this and whether it should be included in my work. If I survive.

**Author's Note:**

> Dragon Girl in story form is available at <http://www.sarahmensinga.com/dragon-girl>. As far as I know, there's been no movie version of it, but I think it would be fun to do.


End file.
